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Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 September 2019
Many works listed at the end of Chapter 3 are pertinent to subjects covered here. For overviews of trade in the leading colonial powers see Zahedieh, Nuala, “Overseas Trade and Empire,” in The Economic History of Modern Britain, eds. Floud, Roderick, Humphries, Jane, and Johnson, Paul, 2 vols. (Cambridge, UK, 2014), I: 392–420; and Daudin, Guillaume, Commerce et prospérité. France au XVIIIe siècle, 2nd ed. (Paris, 2011). Ormrod, David, The Rise of Commercial Empires. England and the Netherlands in the Age of Mercantilism, 1650–1770 (Cambridge, UK, 2003), places Dutch trade within a regional context; see also van Tielhof, M., The “Mother of All Trades”: The Baltic Grain Trade in Amsterdam from the Late 16th to the Early 19th Century (Leiden, 2002). For Spain, see Sarrión, Guillermo Pérez, The Emergence of a National Market in Spain, 1650–1800. Trade Networks, Foreign Powers and the State (2012; London, 2016), and Grafe, Regina, Distant Tyranny. Markets, Power and Backwardness in Spain, 1650–1800 (Princeton, 2012). Fisher, H. W. S., The Portugal Trade. A Study of Anglo-Portuguese Commerce 1700–1770 (London, 1971), covers more subjects than its title suggests. For Mediterranean trade, see Divisiis, Gigliola Pagano de, English Merchants in Seventeenth Century Italy (Cambridge, UK, 1997); and At the Centre of the Old World. Trade and Manufacturing in Venice and the Venetian Mainland, 1400–1800, ed. Lanaro, Paola (Toronto, 2006). Scandinavian and Baltic trade are discussed in several chapters of The Cambridge History of Scandinavia, vol. II.
For commerce with and within Asia, consult Jacobs, Els M., Merchant in Asia: The Trade of the Dutch East India Company during the 18th Century (Leiden, 2006); Liu, Yong, The Dutch East India Company’s Tea Trade with China, 1757–1781 (Leiden, 2007); Nierstrasz, Chris, Rivalry for Trade in Tea and Textiles: The English and Dutch East India Companies (1700–1800) (Basingstoke, UK, 2015); Chaudhuri, K. N., The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company 1660–1760 (Cambridge, UK, 1978); The New Cambridge History of India. II.5., European Commercial Enterprise in Pre-colonial India, ed. Om Prakash (Cambridge, UK, 1998). For chartered companies, see The East India Company, 1600–1857, eds. Pettigrew, William A. and Gopalan, Mahesh (London and New York, 2017); Bowen, H. V., The Business of Empire. The East India Company and Imperial Britain, 1756–1833 (Cambridge, UK, 2006); Haudrère, Philippe, La Compagnie française des Indes au XVIIIe siècle, 2 vols. (2nd ed.; Paris, 2005); Wellington, Donald C., French East India Companies: A Historical Account and Record of Trade (Lanham, MD, 2006). Gottmann, Felicia, Global Trade, Smuggling, and the Making of Economic Liberalism. Asian Textiles in France 1680–1760 (Basingstoke, UK, 2016), discusses licit and illicit trade; Gottmann, Felicia, “French-Asian Connections: The Compagnies des Indes, France’s Eastern Trade, and New Directions in Historical Scholarship,” The Historical Journal 56 (2013): 537–62, is an overview with bibliography. Essays in Goods from the East, 1600–1800. Trading Eurasia, ed. Berg, Maxine (Basingstoke, UK, 2015) discuss new consumption items and their significance.
Gervais, Pierre, “Neither Imperial, nor Atlantic: A Merchant Perspective on International Trade in the Eighteenth Century,” History of European Ideas 34 (2008): 465–73, propounds a wide conceptualization. Morgan, Kenneth, Slavery, Atlantic Trade and the British Economy, 1660–1800 (Cambridge, UK, 2000), is broader than its title signals. De Vries and van der Woude, The First Modern Economy, 464–81, is the best overview of Dutch Atlantic commerce; Emmer, P. C., “The Dutch and the Second Atlantic System,” in Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System, ed. Solow, Barbara (Cambridge, UK, 1991), 75–95; and Riches from Atlantic Commerce: Dutch Transatlantic Trade and Shipping, 1585–1817, eds. Postma, Johannes and Enthoven, Victor (Leiden, 2003), are helpful updates. For the “sugar revolution” and its background, see Higman, B. W., “The Sugar Revolution,” Economic History Review 53 (2000): 213–36; Tropical Babylons: Sugar and the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450–1680, ed. Schwartz, Stuart B. (Chapel Hill, 2004); Menard, Russell, Sweet Negotiations: Sugar, Slavery, and Plantation Agriculture in Early Barbados (Charlottesville, 2006). For Scottish trade, see Devine, T. M., Scotland’s Empire and the Shaping of the Americas, 1600–1815 (Washington, DC, 2004); for Irish, Truxes, Thomas M., Irish-American Trade, 1660–1783 (Cambridge, UK, 1988); for Spanish, Lamikiz, Xabier, Trade and Trust in the Eighteenth Century Atlantic World: Spanish Merchants and Their Overseas Networks (Woodbridge, UK, 2010), and Brilli, Catia, Genoese Trade and Migration in the Spanish Atlantic (1700–1830), New York, 2016); for Italian, Tazzara, Corey, The Free Port of Livorno and the Transformation of the Mediterranean World, 1574–1790 (Oxford, 2017). For retailing, Stobart, Jon and Bailey, Lucy, “Retail Revolution and the Village Shop, c. 1660–1860,” Economic History Review 71 (2018): 393–417; van den Heuvel, Danielle and Ogilvie, Sheilagh, “Retail Development in the Consumer Revolution: The Netherlands, c. 1670–c. 1815,” Explorations in Economic History 50 (2013): 69–87; Retailers and Consumer Changes in Early Modern Europe, eds. Blondé, Bruno, et al. (Tours, 2005); Alternative Exchanges: Secondhand Circulations from the Sixteenth Century to the Present, ed. Fontaine, Laurence (New York, 2008); Fontaine, Laurence, History of Pedlars in Europe (Durham, NC, 1996).
The effects of foreign trade on European economies are treated in A Machina, Deus Ex Revisited. Atlantic Colonial Trade and European Economic Development, eds. Emmer, Piet, Pétré-Grenouilleau, Olivier, and Roitman, Jessica V. (Leiden, 2006); O’Rourke, Kevin, Escosura, Leandro Prados de la, and Daudin, Guillaume, “Trade and Empire,” in The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Europe, vol. 1, eds. Broadberry, Stephen and O’Rourke, Kevin (Cambridge, UK, 2010), 96–121; Palma, Nuno, “Sailing away from Malthus: Intercontinental Trade and European Economic Growth, 1500–1800,” Cliometrica 10 (2016): 129–49. Williams, Eric E., Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, 1944), set off modern debates on the relations of slaving, American plantation agriculture, and the Industrial Revolution; recent considerations include Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System, ed. Solow, Barbara L. (Cambridge, UK, 1991); Eltis, David and Engerman, Stanley, “The Importance of Slavery and the Slave Trade to Industrializing Britain,” Journal of Economic History 60 (2000): 123–44; Inikori, Joseph E., Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study in International Trade and Economic Development (Cambridge, UK, 2002); Daudin, Guillaume, “Profitability of Slave and Long-Distance Trading in Context: The Case of Eighteenth-century France,” Journal of Economic History 64 (2004): 144–71. For empire and mercantilism, see O’Brien, Patrick K., “Inseparable Connections: Trade, Economy, Fiscal State, and the Expansion of Empire, 1688–1815,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire, II, The Eighteenth Century, ed. Marshall, P. J. (Oxford, 1998), 53–77; Magnusson, Lars, The Political Economy of Mercantilism (London, 2015); Mercantilism Reimagined. Political Economy in Early Modern Britain and its Empire, eds. Stern, Philip and Wennerlind, Carl (Oxford, 2013); Barth, Jonathan, “Reconstructing Mercantilism: Consensus and Conflict in British Imperial Economy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” William and Mary Quarterly 73 (2016): 257–90.
Hobsbawm’s original essay was reprinted and updated in Crisis in Europe 1560–1660, ed. Aston, Trevor (London, 1965). The debate it sparked can be sampled in The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century, eds. Parker, Geoffrey and Smith, Lesley M., 2nd ed. (London, 1997), and in works listed after Chapter 1. de Vries, Jan, “The Economic Crisis of the Seventeenth Century after Fifty Years,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 40 (2009): 151–94, reconsiders and reinterprets Hobsbawm while surveying scholarship on the seventeenth-century crisis. Immanuel Wallerstein succinctly outlines his position in The Modern World-System II: Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600–1750, new ed. (Berkeley, 2011), 24–29. Clark, Gregory, A Farewell to Alms: A Short Economic History of the World (Princeton, 2007), provides a Malthusian explanation. Parker, Geoffrey, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven, 2013), presents far-reaching claims for the impact of the “Little Ice Age” on events around the world. For the most consequent conflict’s impact, see The Thirty Years’ War, ed. Parker, Geoffrey, rev. ed. (London, 1987). Alfani, Guido, “Plague in Seventeenth-century Europe and the Decline of Italy: An Epidemiological Hypothesis,” European Review of Economic History 17 (2013): 408–30, examines the dissimilar incidence and effects of disease on European economies.
Material relevant to this period is found in many works listed at the end of Chapter 4. For east Elbia, see also Melton, Edgar, “Population Structure, the Market Economy, and the Transformation of Gutsherrschaft in Central Europe, 1650–1800: The Cases of Brandenburg and Bohemia,” German History 16 (1998): 297–327; Hagen, W. W., “Two Ages of Seigniorial Economy in Brandenburg-Prussia: Structural Innovation in the 16th Century, Productivity Gains in the 18th Century,” in European Aristocracies and Colonial Elites: Patrimonial Management Strategies and Economic Development, 15th-18th Centuries, eds. Janssens, Paul and Yun-Casalilla, Bartolomé (Aldershot, UK, 2005), 137–53; Rasmussen, Carsten Porskrog, “Innovative Feudalism. The Development of Dairy Farming and ‘Kopelwirtschaft’ on Manors in Schleswig-Holstein in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Agricultural History Review 58 (2010): 172–90; Malinowski, Mikolaj, “Market Conditions in Preindustrial Poland, 1500–1772,” Economic History of Developing Regions 31 (2016): 253–76.
Recent reviews of Iberian agrarian issues and findings are in Carlos Álvarez-Nogal, Leandro de la Escosura, Prados, and Santiago-Caballero, Carlos, “Spanish Agriculture in the Little Divergence,” European Review of Economic History 20 (2016): 452–77; Santiago-Caballero, Carlos, “The Rain in Spain? Climate versus Urban Demand as Causes of Agricultural Stagnation in Eighteenth-century Spain,” European Review of Economic History 17 (2013): 451–70. For bibliography, albeit on the peasantry more than agrarian history, see Alfani, Guido, “Back to the Peasants: New Insights into the Economic, Social, and Demographic History of Northern Italian Rural Populations During the Early Modern Era,” History Compass 12 (2014): 62–71. McArdle, Frank, Altopascio (Cambridge, UK, 1978), remains a fine case study. For Scandinavia, see Dan H. Andersen and Jens Chr. V. Johansen, “Economy and Social Conditions,” in The Cambridge History of Scandinavia, eds. Kouri and Olesen, II: 457–89; for Danish reforms, Arnold Barton, H., Scandinavia in the Revolutionary Era, 1760–1815 (Minneapolis, 1986).
For France, see Gérard Béaur, “The Benefits of a Historiographical Crisis: The Study of French Rural History (c. 1500–1800) during the Last Fifty Years,” in Rural History in the North Sea Area, eds. Thoen and Van Molle, 119–45, on long-established and newer approaches; Daudin, Commerce et prospérité (Chapter 6), 24–26, 67–106, on intermediaries and rural industry; Jones, Peter M., “The Challenge of Land Reform in Eighteenth and Nineteenth-century France,” Past and Present 216 (2012): 107–42, on obstacles to land consolidation and enclosure; Brennan, Thomas E., “Peasants and Debt in Eighteenth-century Champagne,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 37 (2006): 175–200, on debt benefits and problems; Hoffman, Philip T. and Rosenthal, Jean-Laurent, “New Work In French Economic History,” French Historical Studies 23 (2000): 439–54, on agrarian issues from a transactions cost perspective; Hoffman, Philip T., Growth in a Traditional Society. The French Countryside, 1450–1815 (Princeton, 1996), on Total Factor Productivity in the Paris basin.
English-language monographs on Low Countries agriculture in the seventeenth and eighteenth century are almost entirely lacking; for very brief overviews with bibliographies of works mainly in Dutch and French, see Rural History in the North Sea Area, eds. Thoen and Van Molle, Chapters 8, 11, 12; for the Dutch Republic, de Vries and van der Woude, The First Modern Economy, 27–40, 210–34, 529–61.
In contrast, the literature on English and British agriculture is immense and constantly growing. The Agrarian History of England and Wales. Vol. V, 1640–1750, ed. Thirsk, Joan, 2 vols. (Cambridge, UK, 1985), and Vol. VI, 1750–1850, ed. G. E. Mingay (Cambridge, UK, 1989), remain valuable. For an overview, see Joyce Burnette, “Agriculture, 1700–1870,” in The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain, I: 89–117. Recent interpretations include Overton, Mark, “Re-Establishing the English Agricultural Revolution,” Agricultural History Review 44 (1995): 1–20 (key changes happened after 1750); Thirsk, Joan, Alternative Agriculture: A History from the Black Death to the Present Day (Oxford, 1997) (England’s complicated history of agrarian innovation); Clark, Gregory, “Land Rental Values and the Agrarian Economy: England and Wales, 1500–1914,” European Review of Economic History 6 (2002): 281–308 (no agricultural revolution occurred); Wrigley, E. A., “The Transition to an Advanced Organic Economy: Half a Millennium of English Agriculture,” Economic History Review 59 (2006): 435–80 (eighteenth-century changes in longer perspective); Allen, Robert C., The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (Cambridge, UK, 2008), Chapter 3 (demand-driven interpretation); Muldrew, Food, Energy and the Creation of Industriousness (farmer demand); Shaw-Taylor, Leigh, “The Rise of Agrarian Capitalism and the Decline of Family Farming in England,” Economic History Review 65 (2012): 26–60; Kelly, Morgan and Gráda, Cormac Ó, “Numerare Est Errare: Agricultural Output and Food Supply in England Before and During the Industrial Revolution,” Journal of Economic History 73 (2013): 1132–63 (critical review of estimates and suggestions for more accurate calculations). For Scotland’s agrarian transition, see Davidson, Neil, “The Scottish Path to Capitalist Agriculture,” Journal of Agrarian Change 4 (2004): 227–68, 411–60; 5 (2005): 1–72.
Many works cited in Chapters 2 and 5 have relevance for subjects treated here. For consumer demand, consult also Roche, Daniel, A History of Everyday Things: The Birth of Consumption in France, 1600–1800 (Cambridge, UK, 2000); Sarti, Raffaella, Europe at Home: Family and Material Culture, 1500–1800 (New Haven, 2002); Luxury in the Eighteenth Century. Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods, eds. Berg, Maxine and Eger, Elizabeth (Basingstoke, UK, 2003); Production and Consumption in English Households, 1600–1750, eds. Overton, Mark, Whittle, Jane, Dean, Darron, et al. (London, 2004); Berg, Maxine, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-century Britain (Oxford, 2005); Styles, John, The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-century Britain (New Haven, 2007); Barahona, Victoria López and Sánchez, José Nieto, “Dressing the Poor. The Provision of Clothing among the Lower Classes in Eighteenth-century Madrid,” Textile History 43 (2012): 23–42; DuPlessis, Robert, The Material Atlantic. Clothing, Commerce, and Colonization in the Atlantic World (Cambridge, UK, 2016); Fashioning the Early Modern: Dress, Textiles, and Innovation in Europe, 1500–1800, ed. Welch, Evelyn (Oxford, 2017). Commentary on de Vries, Jan, The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present (Cambridge, UK, 2008), includes Meerkerk, Elise van Nederveen, “Couples Cooperating? Dutch Textile Workers, Family Labour and the ‘Industrious Revolution,’ c. 1600–1800,” Continuity and Change 23 (2008): 237–66; Ogilvie, Sheilagh, “Consumption, Social Capital, and the ‘Industrious Revolution’ in Early Modern Germany,” Journal of Economic History 70 (2010): 287–325; Muldrew, Craig, Food, Energy, and the Creation of Industriousness (Cambridge, UK, 2010); Allen, Robert C. and Weisdorf, Jacob L., “Was There an ‘Industrious Revolution’ before the Industrial Revolution? An Empirical Exercise for England, c. 1300–1830,” Economic History Review 64 (2011): 715–29; Malanima, Paolo and Pinchera, Valeria, “A Puzzling Relationship: Consumptions and Incomes in Early Modern Europe,” Histoire & Mesure 27 (2012): 197–222. On government policy, see Cameralism in Practice: State Administration and Economy in Early Modern Europe, eds. Seppel, Marten and Tribe, Keith (Woodbridge, UK, 2017).
For proto-industrialization, see European Proto-Industrialization, eds. Ogilvie, Sheilagh and Cerman, Markus (Cambridge, UK, 1996); Vardi, Liana, The Land and the Loom. Peasants and Profit in Northern France 1680–1800. (Durham, NC, 1993); Cailly, Claude, “Contribution à la definition d’un mode de production proto-industriel,” Histoire & Mesure 8 (1993): 19–40; Deceulaer, Harald, “Between Medieval Continuities and Early Modern Change: Proto-industrialization and Consumption in the Southern Low Countries (1300–1800),” Textile History 37 (2008): 123–48; Marfany, Julie, Land, Proto-Industry and Population in Catalonia, c. 1680–1829. An Alternative Transition to Capitalism? (Farnham, 2012).
For technology, consult Poni, Carlo, “The Circular Silk Mill: A Factory before the Industrial Revolution in Early Modern Europe,” History of Technology 21 (1999): 65–85; Allen, Robert C., The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (Cambridge, UK, 2009); Mokyr, Joel, The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy (Princeton, 2002); Mokyr, Joel, The Enlightened Economy (New York, 2009); Jacobs, Margaret C., Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West, 2nd ed. (New York, 1997); Jacobs, Margaret C., The First Knowledge Economy. Human Capital and the European Economy, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, UK, 2014); Kelly, Morgan, Mokyr, Joel, and Ó’Gráda, Cormac, “Precocious Albion: A New Interpretation of the British Industrial Revolution,” Annual Review of Economics 6 (2014): 363–89; Joel Mokyr, “An Age of Progress” and Robert Allen, “Technology,” in The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain, 1: 264–320; Wrigley, E.A., Energy and the English Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, UK, 2010). For critiques, Crafts, Nicholas, “Explaining the Industrial Revolution: Two Views,” European Review of Economic History 15 (2011): 153–68; Styles, John, “Fashion, Textiles and the Origins of Industrial Revolution,” East Asian Journal of Asian History 5 (2016): 161–90; Humphries, Jane and Schneider, Benjamin, “Spinning the Industrial Revolution,” Economic History Review 71 (2018): 1–30; Rosenband, Leonard, “The Competitive Cosmopolitanism of an Old Regime Craft,” French Historical Studies 23 (2000): 455–76.
Mediterranean and Scandinavian industries are studied by Belfanti, Carlo Marco, “Rural Manufactures and Rural Proto-industries in the ‘Italy of the Cities’ from the Sixteenth through the Eighteenth Century,” Continuity and Change 8 (1993): 253–80; Maitte, Corine, “Flexibility and Adaptation in the Formation of Three Italian Industrial Districts,” in The Handbook on Industrial Districts, 2 vols., eds. Becattini, Giacomo, Bellandi, Marco, and Propris, Lisa De (New York, 2009), I: 18–31; Thomson, J. K. J., “Explaining the ‘Take-off’ of the Catalan Cotton Industry,” Economic History Review 58 (2005): 701–35; Dan H. Andersen and Jens Chr. V. Johansen, “Economy and Social Conditions,” in The Cambridge History of Scandinavia, vol. 2, 454–508.
For France, consult Luxury Trades and Consumerism in Ancien Régime Paris. Studies in the History of a Skilled Workforce, eds. Fox, Robert and Turner, Anthony (Aldershot, UK, 1998); Rosenband, Leonard, Papermaking in Eighteenth-century France: Management, Labor, and Revolution at the Montgolfier Mill, 1761–1805 (Baltimore, MD, 2000); Minard, Philippe, “Colbertism Continued? The Inspectorate of Manufactures and Strategies of Exchange in Eighteenth-century France,” French Historical Studies 23 (2000): 479–96; Raveux, Olivier, “Spaces and Technologies in the Cotton Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: The Example of Printed Calicoes in Marseilles,” Textile History 36 (2005): 131–45; Horn, Jeff, Economic Development in Early Modern France. The Privilege of Liberty, 1650–1820 (Cambridge, UK, 2015); O’Brien, Patrick, “Path Dependency, or Why Britain Became an Industrialized and Urbanized Economy Long before France,” Economic History Review 49 (1996): 213–49.
On Britain, see Lemire, Beverly, Dress, Culture and Commerce. The English Clothing Trade before the Factory, 1660–1800 (London, 1997); Esteban, Javier Cuenca, “The Rising Share of British Industrial Exports in Industrial Growth,” Journal of Economic History 57 (1997): 879–906; Exceptionalism and Industrialisation: Britain and Its European Rivals, 1688–1815, ed. Escosura, Leandro Prados de la (Cambridge, UK, 2004); Stobart, Jon, The First Industrial Region: North-west England, c.1700–60 (Manchester, 2004); Findlay, Ronald and O’Rourke, Kevin H., Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium (Princeton, 2007), Chapter 6; Wrigley, E. A., The Path to Sustained Growth. England’s Transition from an Organic Economy to an Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, UK, 2016).
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